Floating Nuclear Power Station

angrysponge writes " Russia to Build World's First Floating Nuclear Power Station for $200,000. I don't know what impresses me more, the engineering chutzpah or low-ball pricetag." From the article: "The mini-station will be located in the White Sea, off the coast of the town of Severodvinsk (in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia). It will be moored near the Sevmash plant, which is the main facility of the State Nuclear Shipbuilding Center. The FNPP will be equipped with two power units using KLT-40S reactors. The plant will meet all of Sevmash's energy requirements for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt. If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."

Comments

European Water

[fembots]

What happens when there is a melt down? You can't stop water from spreading to the rest of the world.

Funny that I can't find the word "safety" in the whole article.

Re:European Water

[DietCoke]

I just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines.

Re:European Water

[daviqh]

It's the Russians--> they never mess up...

Re:European Water

[Frogbert]

God damn it, Nuclear != MELTDOWN OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !!!ONE.

Its people like you who have no understanding of the state of the technology these days that are holding the world back. There are far more factories producing loads of toxic chemicals in the world then there are nuclear plants, and they typically don't have to have nearly as high standards of safety. I'm not flaming its just that Nuclear power generation technology has progressed a long way since chernobyl.

Re:European Water

[aelbric]

You mean instead of the thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste that coal-burning power plants pump into the atmosphere every year? Cause we really have that problem licked.

Repeat after me: Nuclear power technology c.2005 is not nuclear power technology c. 1950

Re:European Water

[Diag]

I just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines.

... or the company that builds their nuclear power stations.

Oh, wait.

Re:European Water

[penix1]

And in c. 1950 they were saying, "Repeat after me: Nuclear power is absolutely safe!"

Just goes to show it pays to be skeptical...

B.

Re:European Water

[aelbric]

Skepticism is a rational approach to anything. Baseless fear is not.

The University of Pittsburgh put out an excellent free book on the "Nuclear Energy Option". It not only gives an excellent breakdown of the risk and benefits of nuclear power from a scientific standpoint, but it does an excellent comparison against other (heavily-used) technologies. It can be found here here

The most interesting chapter does a direct comparison of risk from high-level nuclear waste against other toxins introduced to the environment by manufacturing. Quote:

If nuclear power was used to the fullest practical extent in the United States, we would need about 300 power plants of the type now in use. The waste produced each year would then be enough to kill (300 x 50 million =) over 10 billion people. I have authored over 250 scientific papers over the past 35 years presenting tens of thousands of pieces of data, but that "over lO billion" number is the one most frequently quoted. Rarely quoted, however, are the other numbers given along with it11: we produce enough chlorine gas each year to kill 400 trillion people, enough phosgene to kill 20 trillion, enough ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to kill 6 trillion with each, enough barium to kill 100 billion, and enough arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion. All of these numbers are calculated, as for the radioactive waste, on the assumption that all of it gets into people. I hope these comparisons dissolve the fear that, in generating nuclear electricity, we are producing unprecedented quantities of toxic materials.

Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale. My belief is that nuclear is the best choice if we can just get beyond everyone's fear of it.

Re:European Water

[Guppy06]

"What happens when there is a melt down?"

First off, assuming the reactor is actually capable of melting down (most modern designs aren't), the pile will melt through the bottom of the hull, fall down to the ocean floor, and then melt through that until it is spent. Uranium is quite a bit denser than water.

Secondly, it's already happened. Decades ago, the Soviets had a nuclear-powered icebreaker that had a meltdown, in the Bearing Sea, if I remember.

"You can't stop water from spreading to the rest of the world."

Yes, you can. I can't speak for the particular spot where this reactor will be placed, but there are large swaths of ocean where little or no mixing occurs, due to the influence of ocean and atmospheric currents. The Southern Ocean, for example, is pretty well cut-off from water in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans by circumpolar winds and currents.

As for vertical mixing (i. e. after the core has sunk to the bottom), this is even easier to accomplish. Except for near convection-causing volcanic vents, deeper water is cold and likes to stay down, and shallower water is warm and likes to stay up. Any sufficiently experienced submariner and many scuba divers can tell you about thermoclines.

Re:European Water

[Fordiman]

The article doesn't quite have it right.

There are at least fifty unclassified floating nuclear power stations around the world today. They're called Navy aircraft carriers.

Not to mention the hundered or so location-classified nuclear submarines floating about. Not Boomers, though those are generally nuclear powered as well. Nuclear spy subs, armed with simple chemical warheads.

(Note: I'm an ex Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate, and my statements are about as authoritative on this as you're going to get on Slashdot)

There have been no nuclear power accidents on navy vessels. None. And I would not be surprised if the powerstations are of a modified naval design. There are a number of ex navy engineers floating around and while they're not allowed to give away operational secrets (amount of fuel, specific design, etc) to civies, there's no regulation about designing a derivative plant, as long as the important things are changed.

Which, of course, you'd have to do to change from a nuke drive plant to a nuke amp-only plant. Different torque, heat, pressure requirements.

"When" there's a meltdown is a misnomer. Anymore, you don't get to put a nuclear design into production with any cutting of the corners (the number one cause of design failure is not building exactly to design). Modern fission plant designs are "Walk-away safe", meaning that the can run, unmanned, until their fuel runs out.

Additionally, if anything goes out of tolerance - the steam getting too hot, the coolant clogging, a sensor going out, anything - the mediator rods drop and the heavy water is flushed for normal water, then drained (effectively shutting the plant down until it can be "manually" restarted).

And don't count on some inscrupulous company deciding to surreptitiously cut corners and build under spec; the threat of meltdown on land is too great for any company to take. Threatening it on water is *far* worse, even with the salt in the water.

Which brings the question of your concern. A large volume of stagnant seawater (about 100 galons per gram of radioactive material for a full-on meltdown) is sufficient to break alpha and beta radiation down to non-dangerous levels in the space of a few years. For alpha, the salts capture the neutrons pretty readily becoming heavy but low-radiation isotopes, while the neutrons' kinetic energy is distributed by the movement of said salt ions (ie: the atoms don't shatter because of the weak lattices formed between salt ions and water ions). Something similar happens with beta radiation, but causing some greater problems; trace amounts of posionous chemicals are produced in the process. Since the actual mass involved is so big to so small, the ppm count is low, but it's still potentially problematic.

Meanwhile, in the ocean, you don't have stagnant water, you have moving water. Kinda like moving in a pool cools you off more quickly, the motion of the water helps to finish the fallout before it reaches your shores.

In short: I wouldn't worry about a well-off-shore plant melting down, and even if it did, the fallout would hardly be global. I would, however, want it a few miles away from *my* coast, just in case.

Re:European Water

[TapeCutter]

" just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines."

...or even worse, the company advertising "Chernobal Eco tours" on the left hand side of the page.

Re:European Water

[Rei]

So many misconceptions, so little time:

1) Almost every (note: not every. There are some anti-proliferation designs out there) uranium-fired reactor can double as a weapons materials production facility. High energy neutrons impacting U-238 produce plutonium.

2) The "largest accident" involving a "properly designed commercial power reactor" depends on what you call a "properly designed reactor". Here's just the briefest introduction into nuclear power accidents in history (note: only about a third of the entries are about nuclear power; the rest are about weapons). There are far, far more than made the list. Even modern CANDUs have had significant accidents.

Part of the problem is the environment that nuclear reactors operate in. You start with a nice, relatively simple setup, but as the reactor operates, everything breaks down. You get high temperatures and pressures. Decay products are often quite corrosive and reactive, some readily leakable (gasses, et al), etc. You get high radiation fluxes, which weaken metal lattices. Etc. Between the (relatively) low profit margins on the nuclear industry (it's heavily subsidized to stay afloat), the difficulty in maintaining hot core elements, and the extreme risks from part failures, it's not an easy task.

In *perfect operation*, the entire nuclear cycle releases about as much radiation into the atmosphere (depends on the study - one study I saw showed as little as half as much) as coal power plants. Yes, there are radiation releases in normal operation of the nuclear fuel cycle - much of it in mining, for example. That's in perfect operation, mind you, and ignores the waste which must be stored. To make it worse, most coal radiation is alpha, which isn't particularly nasty. In an accident, though, the scale of released waste can be catastrophic. It's not generally the number of casualties that's the problem - Chernobyl, Chazhma Bay, etc, had few casualties. The problem is the land that they ruin and people that they displace - in a bad location, they can be a truly monstrous economic disaster.

Of course, nuclear doesn't release quantities of soot and CO2 best measured in exponential notation. ;) Also, to back up for a minute, I should correct one of the parent posters: you don't have to have a great deal of worry about accident waste for 10,000 years or whatnot. For example, even at Chernobyl, everywhere except the reactor itself should be relatively "safe" for permanent residents in 200-600 years. The place cools an awful lot after the short lifespan isotopes are gone.

By the way, you may want to rethink what makes a reactor safe. For example, the darling of many slashdotters, the PBMR, *is* a graphite moderated reactor. Reactor safety is a complex issue, and even the void coefficient isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Residual heat, chemical reactions, and pressure buildup can all be equally problematic.

Probably the biggest thing leading to reactor safety is a containment structure. While not invulnerable (a buildup of hydrogen gas, a liquid sodium/concrete detonation, etc), containment structures have saved us many times, and will continue to for the forseeable future.

Re:European Water

[Guppy06]

"a large slab of highly radioactive material will give off heat. "

For the short term, yes. But after plunging through ~4 km of supercooled water (which also acts as a neutron moderator), it won't be hot (in either sense of the word) for very long.

"What do you think that heat would do to the thermoclines?"

At the pressures down there, not much. First, the heat would have to fight the pressure enough for the local water to expand. Then the local water would have to be hot enough to retain enough heat to make it all the way up (kilometers) to the thermocline. Then it would still have to have enough heat to be drastically less dense than the water above the thermocline in order to punch through and continue up to the surface.

If the pile is sufficiently hot for local water to actually convect up to the thermocline (i. e. temperature similar to a volcanic vent), it'd probably be more inclined to raise the thermocline than to pierce it. Between the heat conduction and pressure drop of the surrounding water as a packet of hot water moves up (1 atm every 30 m), it's just not going to stay hot or organized enough.

Re:European Water

[quarkscat]

Your statement would seem to imply that nuclear technology has advanced so far that there are no longer any issues with this power source. AFAIK there is still a problem concerning high level radioactive waste (spent fuel, core, primary cooling system), since some of it has a half-life of 20,000 years.

Radioactive half-life does NOT mean that in 20,000 years the radiation will automagically disappear -- it only means that just half of the radioactivity will be gone in that time. It might take 10 iterations of 20,000 years for the radiation of some items (like spent nuclear fuel) to decay to the point of relative safety.

No known government or corporation has every existed for 2,000 years, let alone 20,000 or 200,00 years. The only institution that I know of that has lasted that long is the Roman (christian) Church. I have yet to see any politician, Dept of Energy bureaucrat, or nuclear industy spokesperson publically suggest the formation of a "nuclear priesthood" to keep watch over, monitor and maintain radioactive waste casks for the next 100,000 years. Nor, for that matter, have I seen any of these same people incorporate 100,000 years worth of labor, materials, or liability in their claims of "cheap nuclear power". The closest was an early Dept of Energy claim that nuclear power plants would produce electricity that would be "too cheap to meter" (, and this propaganda was found to be completely false.)

First?

[syukton]

I beg to differ. Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines would be the first...

Re:First?

[RGRistroph]

Actually you are right -- the first civilan nuclear power plant was a dry-docked nuclear sub in Pennsylvania.

Re:First?

[kcb93x]

Plus, with the sheer low cost ($200,000 for an output 1/50th of that of a normal Russian nuclear power plant...so the cost of these to equal a normal Russian nuclear plant would be $10,000,000) I think that $10 million is less than the cost of a normal nuclear power plant. Perhaps we should look at this design as well, I mean, evalute it for chrissakes!

We put nuclear power plants to sea all the time. Our aircraft carriers, our submarines, for the most part have gone completely nuclear. Why not, the military uses them. Let's take a look at this. 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt...daaaannnnng.

Heck, even if we don't use these as permanant plants, how about having a few of them as floaters, for rent to cities/owners of the power grid as needed? Oh, having an excessive heat wave $CITY ? Here, for $x.xx/kilowatt, with a minimum purchase of $XX,XXX, we'll add power to your grid.

Seriously...let's take a look at this.

Re:First?

[moosesocks]

From the unique reactors linked to by the parent poster:

2008: The Floating Reactor (the Severodvinsk Reactor)

In 2008, if all goes according to plan, the world's first commercial floating nuclear power plant will be ready to begin operation... Pravda, the Russian news publication, reported the project was approved by the head of the Ministry for Nuclear Power, Alexander Rumyantsev. Sevmash Enterprise, which specializes in submarine construction, will build the vessel. Rosenergoatom, the Russian nuclear firm, will supply the reactors. Two such floating power stations are planned, each anticipated to cost $100 to $120 million. The first one will supply power to the city of Severodvinsk, approximately 50 miles west of Archangel.

Looks like TFA was wrong by several orders of magnitude on this one....

Hydrogen wells...

[otis wildflower]

.. Perhaps offshoring plants like this and using them to generate hydrogen + power?

Eeentaresting...

long range power grid feeding

[BewireNomali]

Can you build a cluster of these and feed the electricity into the power grid in instances like the US where our power grid is well developed?

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Stickney]

What about a Beowulf cluster?

Re:long range power grid feeding

[bhima]

You know, I can think of a lot of phrases that go with " US power grid" and none of them sound like "well developed".

"Run on Win ME" springs to mind, or maybe "Expensive Claptrap" perhaps.

Oh.. and by the way moving energy around is the single most energy extensive thing done in the US, accounting for over 1/2 of the energy generated. You'd be better off finding a way to generate the energy where you use it.

Heh...

[fiendo]

Yeah, I think the U.S. has those too--they're called "nuclear submarines".

Re:Heh...

[Em Ellel]

And the subs can also defend themselves from pretty much anything, which is more than I can say for this Russian terrorist honeypot.
 
... Our subs have nothing to fear but fear itself.... ... well, that and running into underwater mountains at high speed...

In other words, the cost of 200k is just the downpayment--your installment plan will kick in when the Chechens blow your terrorist honeypot skyhigh.

Yes, because, you know, terrorists could never attack a US military vessel

Besides, if you bothered to read the article ... wait ...... I now understand the error of what I am saying ..... reading the article ... it's just not the Slashdot way ... *sigh* ... nevermind...

Oh damn...

[MagicDude]

Now electricity is being offshored. When's it going to end?

Safety

[greening]

Just out of curiousity, what would happen if something big were to happen in the area of the floating power plant (something like Katrina, etc.)?

Re:Safety

[cgenman]

Meltdown requires heat, and water forms a pretty effective barrier against nuclear radiation. I'd guess that at the first sign of trouble, you sink the whole thing. It's only 200k, after all.

It's easy to save money --

[VAXGeek]

they bought the fuel rods on ebay.ru!

Re:I Guess...

[cduffy]

Three Mile Island was hardly a disaster, and Chernobyl was a plant with a horrifically poor design by modern standards.

Just because you say nuclear energy is a bad idea doesn't make it so -- and of the alternatives, they either do far worse environmental damage or cannot practically be scaled to meet demand.

Re:I Guess...

[Bigby]

Do you know anything about current nuclear technologies. You couldn't have a nuclear meltdown if you tried anymore. Plus, with pebble bed reactors, nuclear plants can be practically anywhere.

Many people are against Nuclear plants because of Chernobyl. Did you know that a coal plant releases more radiation outside its walls than a nuclear plant?

I guess it's people like you that are the reason no new plants (in the U.S.) have been built in decades.

First?

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

How about the Sturgis, a "440-foot-long World War II Liberty ship that the Army converted into a floating 45-megawatt nuclear power plant."

More about Unique Reactors

$200K???

[CrazyTalk]

How is that possible? You can't even buy a one bedroom condo for that in a major city! Must be a misprint, or due to government subsidy.

Re:$200K???

[g0at]

Must be a misprint, or due to government subsidy

You're suggesting that the Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency (government) is being subsidized by the government?

-b

Today's Nuclear Power

[quark101]

is actually very safe. Because of tremendous advances in both safety and efficiency, nuclear power is actually a very viable alternative to fossil fuels for power generation. However, due to very high profile disasters (ala 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl), the American public is deathly afraid of just the idea. In contrast, I know that France supplies a large part of the power through the use of these more modern generators, and to my knoweledge, there have been no problems.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[jfengel]

Well gosh, we may have made parts of the world unliveable for decades to come in the past, but this time we've got the problem licked. You can trust our figures: we've got a vested interest in selling nuke plants!

Sorry for the sarcasm; I'd really like to see something replace our fossil fuel dependencies, and I'm even willing to consider the long-term problems that nuke plants saddle us with in exchange for it.

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of nuke plants.

So what I'm saying is: I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Quadraginta]

I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

Well, I doubt it, although perhaps I am being overly cynical with respect to you personally.

My experience is that all that is required for people to rapidly abandon principle is a steep rise in the expense of maintaining that principle. It's amazing how clever people are about talking themselves into a new universal principle when the old one runs up against sheer basic personal need.

So, let the price of electricity from fossil fuels rise a factor of 10 or so, and I think we'll be amazed at how little work it will take to convince people formerly passionately opposed to nuclear power to accept it.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly

Really? Compared to what? Large hydroelectric dams?

How many people were killed at Three Mile Island? ZERO.

The U.S. nuclear power industry has been operating for over 50 years without ONE fatality to a member of the general public.

Hydro, coal, and oil cannot say the same.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cheesybagel]

So what? Just dump it in the ocean, in a subduction zone between tectonic plates.

The reason we are storing the so called "waste" is that most of it is actually precious unburned fuel, in the form of plutonium and uranium.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Fweeky]

"You have to store it for a billion years"

You do? What radioactive byproducts do we produce that's both dangerously radioactive and remains that way for such a long time? Or did you just pick a random large number that sounded good?

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[ScrewMaster]

Like the instructor in Heinlein's Starship Troopers said to his class, "Society abides by the morals that it can afford".

That's from the book: that line didn't make it to the movie.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[quark101]

You really want an answer? Ok. I won't use the excuse that coal plants generate way more waste than the nuclear ones do. You've heard of Yucca Mountain, right? A big huge mountain, out in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada? As it stands right now, Yucca Mountain can safely contain the nuclear waste for ~10,000 years. Personally, I think that that is more than adequate. If we aren't off this planet in 10,000 years, than we all deserve to die a slow, painful death of radiation poisoning. Look how far we have come in the last 2,000 years. Now, just try to imagine where we will be in the next 5,000 alone. And besides, there is only a finite amount of resources in the world. We will eventually have to get more from somewhere else.

You ask if I would be willing to have a nuclear waste repository in my backyard? Actually, it wouldn't bother me a bit. Unlike some people, I geneally try not to be unreasonably afraid of things that aren't going to harm me. The new reactors are safe, and the way that they are planning on storing the material is safe.

Have you ever looked at the plans for Yucca Mountain? It isn't just a shoddy, half-assed government project like many people have come to expect. The material is buried almost literally in the heart of the mountain, in living stone? Do you know what that means? The rock is still growing and chaning. The tunnels in the Yucca Mountain complex are slowly sinking down, to eventually seal off the material even more than we will have already done so. The containers are made to be highly corrosion resistant, and did I mention that it is in the middle of nowhere?

It is one thing to fear something. It is quite another to have a baseless, irrational fear of the same thing.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Jim_Callahan]

What risk exactly are we trying to mitigate here? Based on past performance, you have approximately a 0.000000000000000000000000% chance of being harmed by an american-designed nuclear reactor. Well, unless you've invested heavily in coal-burning plant futures or something. Really, a 0% risk is rather difficult to reduce.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[pipingguy]

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of nuke plants.

Search and replace:

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when airplanes fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of airplanes.

Re:Adantage?

[limon.verde]

It can be towed away. In the article it says: "Russia will only sell its products - electric power, heat and fresh water. [snip] A floating plant under the Russian flag would be taken up to the coasts of states that had signed the necessary agreements. It would drop anchor in a convenient place [snip]. Then it would start up its reactors and - let there be light!"

After 12 years, it would be towed back home, leaving no nuclear materials behind. It's like selling fish instead of fishing nets.

Radiation shielding

[Crixus]

They've obviously opted not to go with that expensive and heavy lead stuff, and use recycled aluminum foil. :-)

Floating?

[drsquare]

Obviously they're short of land in Russia...

Fitting location

[rxmd]

Severodvinsk on the White Sea is a major nuclear disaster area. There are a number of nuclear submarine repair sites there. This power plant is probably either a former submarine reactor or built from one.

My wife's uncle used to serve as chief engineer on Soviet and later Russian nuclear submarines. He still lives near Severodvinsk and says that the overall radiation level at those sites is higher than in Chernobyl. He managed to have two healthy children and asked both of them to study and work somewhere else.

Re:I Guess...

[Mostly a lurker]

Nuclear power is not and will never be safe.

Driving cars will never be completely safe either. The question is whether nuclear power can be made safe enough that the benefits outweigh the risks. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for the layman to evaluate those risks, so we either (i) say (rather illogically) that there are no circumstances where nuclear power can ever be justified; or (ii) have to rely on the word of experts who are usually not impartial.

Right now, in most countries, nuclear power seems not to be justified economically, and (while alternative energy sources usually also have a very negative environmental impact) nuclear power produces some seriously polluting byproducts. If those issues can be addressed, I would definitely be willing to consider the arguments as to the risks.

More info on the KLT-40S

[Lally Singh]

From: http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Floating_N-p lants.html :

* A floating nuclear power plant design, under development by OKBM in Russia, uses the KLT-40s reactor system, and involves a "special-purpose non-self-propelled ship" (a barge) intended for operation in a protected water area. There are plans to build a nuclear heat and power generating plant with a floating power-generating unit in the area of Pevek, Chukot Peninsula, in northeastern Siberia, and in Severodvinsk (Archangelsk region). The technical and economic characteristics of this power plant are:
* Electric power - 60 MW
* Heat output - 50 Gcal/h
* Number of reactor systems and main turbogenerators - 2
* Overall plant lifetime - 40 years

These power plants are multipurpose in terms of possible applications, since they provide electric power generation while also providing heat supply for various purposes, including seawater desalination.

[Source: Georgy M. Antonovsky (Chief Specialist, OKBM-the Experimental and Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) et al., Table IV - "Technical and economic characteristics of a floating nuclear power station with the KLT-40s", in "PWR-type reactors developed by OKBM", Nuclear News, March 2002, p. 33]

* The KLT-40s is based on the KLT-40, which the US DOE has called a proven, commercially available, small PWR system because its design is based entirely on the nuclear steam supply system used in Russian icebreakers. The KLT-40 is a portable, floating, nuclear power plant intended mainly for electric power generation, but it also possesses the capability for desalination or heat production. The reactor core is cooled by forced circulation of pressurized water during normal operation, but in all emergency modes, the design relies mainly on natural convection in the primary and secondary coolant loops.

The KLT-40 is mounted on a barge, complete with the nuclear reactor, steam turbines, and other support facilities. It is designed to be transported to a remote location and connected to the energy distribution system in a manner similar to the Mobile High Power nuclear power plant operated by the U.S. Army in the 1970s. The designer and supplier of the KLT-40 is the Russian Special Design Bureau for Mechanical Engineering (OKBM).

Fuel for the KLT-40 is a uranium-aluminum metal alloy clad with a zirconium alloy. 200 kg of U-235 gives a core power density of 155 kW per liter on average (that's relatively high for a reactor, according to the DOE report), and the fuel may be high-enriched uranium (U-235 content at or above 20 percent). The fuel assembly structure and manufacturing technology are proven, and its reliability has been verified by the long-term operation of similar cores.

The KLT-40's primary system involves four coolant pumps feeding four steam generators. The secondary system uses two turbogenerators with condensate pumps, main and standby feed pumps, and two steam condensers. As much as 35 MWt energy can be transferred from the condensers to a desalination plant via an intermediate circuit.

The KLT-40 includes a steel containment vessel designed to withstand overpressure conditions. A passive-pressure suppression system condenses steam that might escape into the containment building.

The KLT-40 has a variety of "inherent safety characteristics". One involves the prodigious use of "burnable poison" in the fuel such that cold shutdowns are assured (because any increase in core temperature results in a lowering of core power -- it's what's called having a large negative temperature coefficient for the reactor core).

The KLT-40 is designed using a plug-and-play philosophy. It gets built at the factory and is able to be transported over water to remote locations. Although the KLT-40 requires refueling every two to three years, the transportability of the entire plant to maintenance centers provides enhanced pro

Back when I was a lad ...

[John Jorsett]

I remember during the "energy crisis" of the early seventies, one of our colleagues at a Navy laboratory that happened to be near a submarine base suggested that we tap into the multi-megawatt output of docked nuclear subs to supply some of our lab's power. Needless to say, the "no nukes" eco-freaks that worked at the lab came unglued. I never knew if he was serious or just trying to get a rise out of people. If the latter, it certainly worked.

Don't be stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is not and will never be safe.

By your logic, you must have burned to death this morning when the highly-flamable gasoline in your car spontaneously (1) leaked onto you and your children, and (2) caught fire, killing you almost instantly - because, as we all know - "gasoline power is not and never will be safe."

Also, you can burn to death if you climb into the oven - so we'd better ban them all. Same for power drills, so you won't accidentally give yourself another lobotomy.

My point is that there are a great number of very well designed machines and equipment in our lives that have nasty reactions or principals in their operation. Those devices are, however, designed to contain or negate the hazards.

Coal power plants burn coal and release carbon dioxide, sulphur, soot and - yes, radiation - directly into the air that you breathe. (FYI, coal plants release more radiation from the coal they burn than nuclear plants, which are designed to internalise all radioactive materials). They pollute and contribute to cancer rates by design.

Strangely nobody (ie: you) seems to really care about coal pollution since burning coal on the fire is an understandable technology that someone can do in their own back yard and never killed nobody (except thousands of coal miners over the centuries, but who cares since we can't see them). Unlike nuclear technology which contains the world "nuclear" in the title and will therefore definitely turn large swathes of the country into a post-Little Boy Hiroshima within 15 seconds of being turned on.

But in reality, nuclear power plants are designed to contain radiation (duh). The old designs were still safe by most measures, but modern pebble-bed nuclear reactor designs take it to extremes. (1) they're far simpler than old pile designs and (2) they're *physically unable* to melt down and go critical - even if the cooling fluid is pumped out completely. The electrical output will drop off and will just.. sit there. Happily doing nothing. Aww, lookkit it. It's happy. Wave back.

If you jump naked into the nuclear reactor core, yes, you'd have some fatal health problems - but the same would happen if you jumped into a conventional furnace.

Please get over your irrational fears.

Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

Russia spent the last few decades of its Soviet era dumping spent navy nuclear cores into the arctic sea. I've never heard of any accountability for that egregious poisoning of the most productive biome on the planet. So it's clear that they're learning from their successes.

And any reporter who doesn't realize that a "kilowatt" is a rate of energy over time has zero credibility - they're a PR agent. They're selling nuclear power that's "too cheap to measure", which we all know is the kind of like that sells nukes to people who spend the rest of our lives paying for the construction, security and cleanups.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[ebrandsberg]

Never? The more radioactive the waste, the faster it decays. Did you know that US standards say that if a piece of Granite were taken into a nuclear facility, it would be considered waste? Why? It's too radioactive. Yes, the stuff people make kitchen counters out of. This isn't to say you can bury the stuff for 20 years and it will be significantly less hazardous, but it can at least be contained, unlike the output from a coal fired power plant.

Final point, NEVER, EVER use absolute statements to make a point as exceptions will always bite you in the ass.

Two comments

[golodh]

1) Having floating nuclear powerplants is just an extension and continuation of the Russian practice of using the powerplants of moored nuclear submarines to feed the grid. In this case they left out the sub and kept the powerplant ... instant savings.

2) I feel that there are serious safety and environmental issues with this approach. Unfortunately the typical way of doing things seems to be to blithely ignore risks until they actually materialise (read: until things go wrong).

2.a) First issue: containment in case of leaks or accidents. Land-based reactors (in the West) are built with a concrete safety dome. This is to ensure that even if someone were to drop a big fuelled-up Boeing 747 on them (nah ... who would do anything like that eh? Come on ... too far-fetched ...), the radioactive material would (probably) stay _inside_ the safety dome. These reactors don't seem to be fitted with such safety domes, especially if they have to float. And if they do ... is that sufficient to ensure structural integrity in case they sink on impact? And what about repairs / clearance if they do eh?

And remember the fuel processing plants in France (Cap La Haye) and the UK (Sellafield)? The Irish sea issue (one of the most contaminated seas anywhere) should be well known by now (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield).

2.b) Many land sites (not those that use rivers for coolant, but there you go ...) are chosen so that leaks won't lead to polluted groundwater ... and ultimately our drinking water. The white sea is already uninhabitable in places because of sloppy practices with nuclear fuel dumping and scuttling nuclear powered vessels. This will just add to it.

2.c) Security. I submit that land-sites are easier to guard than those that are not only accessible from the sea, but which could actually be towed away in a terrorist attack. If that happens what do you do? Sink it before it gets to waters you _really_ want to protect? Mount an attack by marines and risk having it blown up? Overpower the tugs that pull it, and risk having it blown up? Happy choosing admiral ...

Once again the "pragmatic" quick-fix, buy-now-pay-tomorrow artists seem to have pushed ahead with a scheme that jeopardises resources far beyond what they are be answerable and responsible for.

2.d) I can agree with the much reduced operational hazards of pebble bed reactors, but unless I'm much mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong please) these reactors are just slightly modified shipboard reactors of an aging Sovjet design. After all ... changing _anything_ in a nuclear reactor design is something you don't do lightly.

How about towing a bunch of them up to Boston, New Orleans, LA, and San Francisco? Would solve your energy generation problems a treat! And real cheap too. Any takers?

the things you get for free...

[myowntrueself]

Wow who would have thought it:

"If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."

Presumably supplying heat by, er, going critical and blowing up, desalinating seawater by, er, vaporising it and turning it into an enormous cloud of steam?

Misprint

[r2tincan]

According to this site the reactor will cost between $100 to $120 million.

So I guess it is a misprint.

Not as bad as other stuff

[Quadraginta]

Are you sure you want to worry specifically about radioactive waste? Radioactive waste does, at least, decay and become harmless, more rapidly early on than later (i.e. it becomes half as dangerous every half-life). Moreover it's very easy to detect from a distance (with a Geiger counter, for example). Furthermore it's dangerous only in fairly large amounts (milligrams to grams).

Now compare that to, say, chemical waste such as mercury or lead from disposed batteries, or polycyclic aromatics from the smokestacks of coal plants. Mercury and lead are dangerous in exceedingly small quantities (which is why leaded gasoline was banned -- even the tiny amount in the vapor of gasoline is dangerous). Polycyclic aromatics can cause cancer forever -- they never get less dangerous. And so on.

Put it simply: of all the waste control and disposal issues presented to us by technology, radioactive waste probably does not actually rank near the top. It may be prominent in public discussion primarily because of its unfamiliarity, and because we are fully committed already to the technology (e.g. electronics) that generates chemical waste, whereas we thought in the era of cheap oil that we could do without nuclear power.

An evil scheme!

[BlackMesaLabs]

I can just see the evil movie villain attaching his evil super-tow-rope to the station and towing it away with his evil cruise ship!

Why? So he can hold the world to ransom with his stolen evil floating nuclear power plant!!

Re:Power Station?

[nolife]

Only two things prevent a navy ship tied to a pier from powering the grid. Procedure and an automatic reverse power trip on the shore power supply breakers. Both are in place to protect the ships own electrical bus and generation equipment. The reactor is not normally running in port and the backup power to shore power consists of diesel engine(s) and the battery. These are very limited and designed only to supply enough to power the ships vital equipment.
A simple turn 1/4 turn of a single rheostat on the electical plant control panel is all it takes to change the ships load on shore power from positive to negative but the shore power reverse trips are on a delay to prevent tripping during transients.

I don't think the navy would exactly jump at the chance to power the grid with the nuclear plant running either though. Not having complete control of the load or being kept informed of expected load changes would probably freak people out. We've all heard of the network and system administrators from hell, through training and experience, many navy nuclear operators are the same.

I'll take six!

[SEWilco]

I think New Orleans could use a half-dozen of those...

CA is safe now

[32771]

They could just rent a few of those vessels and get through those nasty brownouts they didn't have this year.

This is also not a big political issue as those barges could be pulled away to say Alaska or Mexico when election time comes. One could even put up a long cable and place the ship in international waters - electrical energy out of nowhere.

Oh, barge with something nuclear on it - this reminds me of something:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.h tml

Castle Romeo is the first barge shot.

Enough rambling.

Re:I Guess...

[AxelTorvalds]

Chernobyl was more of an accident than Hiroshima

Totally, Hiroshima was bombed intentionally... There was nothing accidental about it.

Depends on your definition...

[Goonie]

The "energy" is always present, it's just that a fast breeder reactor converts U-238 (from which the energy is locked up) into plutonium (from which it can be usefully extracted).

As a very crude but hopefully useful analogy, imagine you had a lot of very heavily waterlogged and thus incombustible wood, a coal-fired heater, and a relatively small amount of coal. You use the heat from the coal to dry out the wood. You haven't violated the laws of thermodynamics, but you've got yourself a whole lot more useful fuel. And you can use the burning dried wood to dry some more wood, and so on.

Now, this isn't some kind of perpetual motion machine. Once you've burned the plutonium (the dried wood), you can't burn it again. But there is so much waterlogged wood (U-238) that we're not going to run out for a very, very, very long time.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[ankhank]

> The more radioactive the waste,
> the faster it decays.

Well, yes, and into what?

The Chernobyl exclusion zone has now been extended because -- after these few years -- some of the the highly radioactive fallout that was relatively safe isotopes of highly radioactive elements -- for example alpha emitters -- have now decayed.

And changed thereby, some of them, into longer lived and yet more dangerous beta and gamma emitting isotopes.

Alphas are stopped by tissue paper, you know, even a lot of them don't do a lot of damage as long as you don't inhale and wash up well.

But the fission daughters of some of those alpha emitters, oh, my.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[__aaxtnf2500]

Piling all of our waste together will not make it go away faster, this is wrong. Yes, if you accumulate more radioactive material, the total rate of decay will increase, because you have more material decaying... The probability of an individual radionuclide undergoing radioactive decay is independent of external influences save interaction with incident sub-atomic particles and the unique case of electron capture. If you took a piece of granite into a US nuclear facility, it would not be considered waste, much less radioactive waste. There are equipment and materials with radiation levels lower than your chunk of granite, however because these materials have DETECTABLE concentrations (> DAC/MDA) of program generated nuclides they will not be released to the public. It is the origin that is important. Case in Point: A worker at a hypothetical (ahem) nuclear facility receives radiopharmaceutical treatment without informing his superiors. He uses the restroom, somehow spreading urine all around the toilet. Later, another work treads the radioactive urine into a radiologically controlled area where the radio-urine is detected on his boots upon egress. The contamination is traced back to the restroom and the contaminant is identified as a radiopharmaceutical by isotopic analysis. The urine is cleaned up without radiological controls due to the origin of the radionuclide.

Re:Russian engineering

[Rolo Tomasi]

Rocket launches? I believe the USA has lost more astronauts than the Soviets/Russians have lost cosmonauts. The Russian rockets currently have a reputation of reliability and low cost.

Come to think of it, the US has had its fair share of nukular fuckups as well - Three Mile Island, or google for lost nuclear weapons ...

harvesting oceans energy

[free2]

Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale.
What is your basis to say that ? Do you really think our sun don't give us enough energy ? Or that we can't save some ? Most of the sun energy goes into oceans and winds. And there are new technologies to harvest this abundant energy: ocean-based windmills (Danemark), tides and waves power plants, high energy algaes harvesting, etc.

The Real Threat

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I agree with some of your points. However, Nuclear Energy is the absolute very least feasible on a global scale. That's all we need to do, is allow every third world country in the world to play around with nuclear material.

The quote fails to mention something. It says how many people the waste could kill. It doesn't mention how many would die if a bomb or meltdown went off, how many generations it would affect, how long the land would remain sterile, etc. It also doesn't mention how many people can be killed if the government of the plants in question use the material to make nuclear warheads. Last I checked, arsenic couldn't kill as many people as a nuclear warhead.

I don't fear nuclear material. I fear nuclear material in the hands of suicide bombers. Maybe chlorine is just as dangerous. That doesn't give any justification to nuclear material, though.

I've heard that argument before on other topics: "Well, sure X can happen to you, but so can Y, so why worry about X?" Either way, you are still left with X.

Besides, nuclear energy is a dead end. It's enough that we destroyed the climate, now we want to irradiate mountains with waste?

I don't have an immediate solution. I wish I did. I think we all wish we did. But, I believe solar energy is the only way to go, whether you are harnessing it from the wind, water, directly, or from fossil fuels, which are a long decended solar power. We have to realize that we have only real reliable power source is the sun. We just have to learn how to harness it better.

We will run out of space to put waste, or run out of raw nuclear material. Sure, it may look like we have plenty. Many thought the same about oil, and now even the oil companies will publically admit that we'll run out fairly soon. If nuclear power provided cheap energy to everyone, then energy usage, like car usage, would skyrocket, and what seemed like so much would become so little.

We have to think at least several hundred years into the future. Short sightedness is the cause of most of our current energy problems. And, we have no choice but to rely on the sun. Should it burn out, I think powering our cities will be the least of our worries.

A smarter man than me had some great ideas about society, economics, energy, etc. http://www.bfi.org/operating_manual.htm I just hope he was also right that man can't sabotage himself faster than he naturally advances.

A few minor corrections

[dfenstrate]

Between the (relatively) low profit margins on the nuclear industry (it's heavily subsidized to stay afloat), the difficulty in maintaining hot core elements, and the extreme risks from part failures, it's not an easy task.

Mostly good information, but I wanted to clear up a few things, at least from the perspective of my nuke plant (Operates as a baseload unit in a de-regulated state).

1. We make tons of money, and we recieve no subsidies. Everytime we buy fuel, we pay into a fund that goes towards long-term fuel storage, and oftentimes we pay for the presence of the NRC often as well. The term 'baseload' refers to the fact that we make electricity cheaper than anyone else, so as grid demand falls, we're the last to reduce power output(in effect, we always operate at full power.)

2. Extreme risk from equipment failures- hardly. The entire plant is designed with the knowledge that parts fail, and there is plenty of redundancy in the system. Moreover, we monitor the integrity of all the systems, the state of all the pumps and the operability of all the valves on a routine basis. Things typically don't fail spontaneously and disasterously, and we initiate corrective action whenever we see performance declining.

In *perfect operation*, the entire nuclear cycle releases about as much radiation into the atmosphere (depends on the study - one study I saw showed as little as half as much) as coal power plants.

I don't know what happens to the fuel before it gets to the plant, but afterwards, we don't release any radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

Sure, there are places in the plant were there are radiation fields, but workers don't spend a lot of time in such areas, and it certainly doesn't get out to the public.

You probably already know, but think of a radiation source as a lightbulb. Stick your face in it and you'll see spots in your eyes for several minutes.

On the other hand, if you look at it during the night from 100 yards away, you'll hardly get any light in your retina.

Coal plants release radioactive particles into the air. Nuke plants emit radiation, but such radiation is stopped by concrete and water before it ever harms anyone.

Containment structures....While not invulnerable (a buildup of hydrogen gas, a liquid sodium/concrete detonation, etc)

Three mile island had numerous hydrogen explosions inside their containment building, and it held. Since my plant was built after three mile island, we have hydrogen recombiners in containment so that the h2 never reaches flammable levels. We also have a system designed to reduce pressure in containment from a massive steam leak, and to remove radioactive iodine from the building before it ever gets a chance to escape. Moreover, the building itself is insanely well built, and it has another, stronger building outside of it. The containment structure is designed, with a huge margin of safety, to withstand any conceivable accident from within.

The inner containment building is a pressure vessel, the outer containment building is a missile barrier designed to withstand airplane impacts. Knowing the construction of the buildings, I dare say they could withstand any calamity short of a bonafide enemy air force dropping bunker busters onto it.

As for liquid sodium- we don't have any in my plant.

The flaws and vulnerabilities of each power plant generation are corrected in the next, and many of the problems you mentioned have been corrected, or will be corrected in subsequent designs.

Anyway, thank you for the otherwise informative post. The above is just from the perspective of my plant, which is widely regarded as one of the safest, cleanest, well-run facilities in the industry. (WANO rating of 100, INPO 1. Use google)